B u l l e t i n - Noble and Greenough School

one Saturday in october, after hitching into accra to do
some shopping, I ran into black intellectual Sinclair Drake.
Drake was a member of our training faculty at Berkeley who
had befriended many of africa’s new heads of state in the
1950s, including the osagyefo, Dr. Kwame nkrumah, first
president of Ghana. “Come on, Flather”—he always called me
Flather—“we’re going to the airport to welcome the osagyefo.
He is returning from China. It will be a spectacle, and you
should see it.” I was not disappointed. a crowd of as many as
100,000 had gathered on the airport apron, with dozens of
paramount chiefs and sub-chiefs under their ceremonial umbrellas
and with their entourages, all in full regalia, dressed in
resplendent kente cloths and gold ornamentation, all with
drummers and traditional horns and bells. “This no be small
small,” Drake said to me, speaking in West african pidgin.
Then, as the crowd began to move to make room for the president,
Drake and I were pressed into the second row. as nkrumah
moved along, he seemed startled as he came upon the
diminutive Drake and oversized me. “Drake, what are you doing
here?” Drake replied, “Hello, Kwame. I have just delivered
your Peace Corps, and now you can meet one of them.” So
there I was, hardly out of college, in the country for just over a
month, surrounded by thousands of Ghanaians, shaking hands
with the president. I would see him again at the end of our
tour, when he feted us at a farewell gathering at Flagstaff
House, his residence—a fitting bookend for our two-year experience,
which had begun with President Kennedy in the
rose Garden.
a few weeks later, back in accra, I took in a movie before
returning to Winneba. From Here to Eternity was playing at
the orion, adjacent to the lorry park where I would catch my
ride. an emotional high point in the film occurs when
Montgomery Clift plays taps after Ernest Borgnine has
beaten Frank Sinatra to death. Sitting by myself during that
scene in the darkened theatre, I suddenly felt a tapping on
my shoulder. as I turned to see three men sitting behind me,
one leaned forward saying, “Sorry...sorry, sorry.” an anonymous
someone was showing compassion to a young white
american stranger. not long afterward, while away teaching,
I was visited by a “tief man,” as robbers are called. Thoughtful
individual that he was, he lifted half of everything, one pair
of shoes, one pair of slacks, some socks and a radio; he carefully
left half of my possessions for me. I realize now that I
was beginning to feel at home in Ghana.
There are so many more stories to tell, but only time just
to mention three great friendships formed in Ghana 50 years
ago. These friends are a Ghanaian man, a Williams grad now
tenured at Brown; a Ghanaian woman, my best student, who
just stepped down as Ghana’s leading public health researcher
(as a non-science person, I like to boast that I did no
harm); and a brilliant colleague at Winneba, an african
american, who is retired as director of writing at lincoln-
Sudbury High School. These three friendships have matured
and themselves inspired many, many more stories—but these
tales will have to wait for another time and after further reflection
on a life decision taken in 1961. —nEWEll FlaTHEr
The photo of Newell Flather ’56 in Ghana (above, opposite) ran
in the Winter 2011–12 issue of the Bulletin. The then-unidentified
man in the center was identified as Flather by scores of graduates
and friends or, as Flather puts it, his “fan base.”
out oF CoNtext No one could identify every person pictured in this
1942 photo, which ran in the previous issue of the Bulletin. Graduates’
collective knowledge, however, gives us the following tentative
iDs. Front row: Dick Flood Jr. ’53; second row: Charles s. bird iii, Dick
Flood ’23, ellen Flood, bill harding ‘42; third row: Arnold Garrison ‘42,
howard Chandler ‘43 and Dick bingham ’43. back row: Neil Ayer ’43,
Jim shattuck ’44, Peter Walker ’44 and James M. Martinez ’39.
the Nobles bulletiN spring 2012 63